Denzel Washington Stars in “The Equalizer”

Denzel Washington appears to be a man in control.

“It’s a facade,” he says, laughing. “No, I’m happy with myself, I’m at peace with myself,” adds the actor, looking in great shape in dark trousers and a grey jumper.

Incredibly, the New York native turns 60 this December, but a mammoth party’s unlikely to be in the pipeline.

Washington, who’s starred in the likes of Malcolm X, Man On Fire, American Gangster and Deja Vu, looks in his prime in his latest movie, The Equalizer.

It’s a violent, action-packed movie that takes its title from the Eighties TV series, and shares its central premise too – a mysterious man called Robert McCall (Washington), who uses his highly trained skills to ‘equalise’ the odds when they’re stacked against the helpless.

In the film, Washington plays a former Black Ops agent who faked his own death, and is now living way too quietly in Boston, working the floor at a Home Mart superstore. His aimless existence is neatly emphasized by director Antoine Fuqua, who last worked with the actor in Training Day. Here, in one coldly lit scene after the next, Fuqua establishes McCall’s loneliness and disconnection.The audience learns so much about the man just by watching McCall silently wash his single plate and knife and fork and fold a tea towel — all with the care of an assassin cleaning his sniper rifle.

“Robert’s done a lot of bad things in the past, and he’s trying to do better,” explains the actor. “He didn’t like himself, but he never lost his skills, he just made a conscious decision to put that behind him.”

It’s when he meets Teri, a young girl (played by Chloe Moretz) who’s being abused by a sex traffic ring, that he decides to do something about it – and despatches the Russian gangsters, in increasingly grisly ways.

The movie saw him reunited with director Antoine Fuqua, who he’d previously collaborated with on 2001’s Training Day, a movie that earned Washington an Oscar (he also won one for 1989’s Glory).

“He’s very talented,” he says of the film-maker. “We sent him the material and he responded with tons of ideas, and it was a done deal.

“Antoine had a vision for the film, doing close work with specialised cameras, but I never worried about any of that. The camera is Antoine’s area of expertise, I just worry about the acting,” Washington adds – modestly – as he’s directed two projects of his own; Antwone Fisher in 2002 and The Great Debaters in 2007.

One of McCall’s trademarks is improvisation. He doesn’t carry a gun, but instead scans a room within seconds to see what he can use as weapons. After watching the movie, it will be difficult to see a corkscrew in the same light, or a DIY shop for that matter, but Fuqua wanted the scenes, however violent, to be realistic.

Washington, who enjoys keeping himself  in check, trained hard with the stunt team, favouring slick, street-style fighting over marital arts, but asked if it’s the most physically tough role of his career, he simply says: “Not more than any other movie, no.”

McCall might be a trained killer, but he also proves to be a nifty dancer, when fooling about with colleagues, ignorant to his capabilities, at the DIY store. Recalling the scene, Washington grins. “I just went online and YouTube’d The Pips and tried to steal some moves. Then I added a bit of my own flair to it.”

has always played a part in how he chooses projects. “I didn’t do a play in New York for 15 years, and the reason was because we were raising our kids,” says Washington, who has four children with Paulette, his wife of 31 years.

“I couldn’t commute, as it was too far to try and do eight shows and come home [to the West Coast] Sunday night and go right back Tuesday morning, so I just laid low for a few years, but now I’m back.”

With the exception of Broadway, and his  The Equalizer delivers on what Washington and Fuqua promise. It’s a straight shot of testosterone, no chaser. You’ll never enter a hardware store and look at that sledge hammer in aisle three the same way again.